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Erlang Solutions Awarded Grants in Excess of €800,000 for Multi-core Computing Research

Erlang Solutions Awarded Grants in Excess of €800,000 for Multi-core Computing Research

Research will help develop and shape the multi-core frameworks of the future

London, 26th July 2011 - Erlang Solutions Limited has been awarded two grants, totalling €800,000, for research into the use of the Erlang programming language in multi-core computing. The grants are funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) for Research and Technological Development, the EU's main instrument for funding research in Europe and are part of €6.9 million granted to two consortiums whose partners consist of European companies and universities. Under its Cooperation Programme, research support is provided to international cooperation projects across the European Union and beyond.

Erlang Solutions and its partners submitted proposals for the ParaPhrase and RELEASE projects in answer to FP7’s call for proposals on the subject of “Alternative Paths to Components and Systems” in Computing, in its Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) research category. The objective is to achieve breakthroughs in the transition to multi-core architectures across the whole computing spectrum – embedded, general-purpose and high-performance computing. This transition affects the underlying hardware, the system software (compilers, tools, OS, etc.) and the programming paradigms.

Titled “Parallel Patterns for Adaptive Heterogeneous Multi-core Systems”, the ParaPhrase project addresses a key technical problem that currently limits the use of integrated multi-core parallel systems, despite its potential for both cheap, scalable high-performance computing and for significant reductions in power consumption. The problem is to maintain portable performance across multiple different CPU/GPU combinations. The ParaPhrase project will address this by developing and deploying new high-level design patterns for parallel applications that allow alternative parallel implementations and that can be initially mapped and subsequently re-mapped to the available hardware.

Kevin Hammond, Professor of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews and the ParaPhrase project coordinator said: “It’s great to be working with Erlang Solutions and its outstanding team of multi-core experts. The company is a leading commercial provider of Erlang-related research, and will expose our research results to tens of thousands of Erlang programmers around the world. Multi-core is a key area where functional language technologies can make a major impact on the real world. ParaPhrase will take a new pattern-based approach, using advanced software refactoring to build parallel programs from sets of software components that will help programmers ‘think in parallel’.”

For the RELEASE project, research will be conducted into “A High-level Paradigm for Reliable Large-scale Server Software”. The aim is to scale the radical concurrency-oriented programming paradigm to build reliable general-purpose software, such as server-based systems, on massively parallel machines. Concurrency-oriented programming is distinctive, as it is built on highly-scalable lightweight processes which ‘share nothing’, in contrast to a conventional language that must typically use operating system processes.

Erlang Solutions will lead on designing and engineering the scalable infrastructure and leverage its events expertise to lead on dissemination and exploitation through conferences, publications, training and through the Erlang opensource community. As both a developer of Erlang applications and a training and consultancy provider, it is in a unique position to carry out detailed evaluation of the work, embed its findings in its own development lifecycle and then provide training and promote appropriate techniques to its clients.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to work on scaling the radical Erlang programming language to build reliable general-purpose software on massively parallel machines,” said Philip W. Trinder, Professor in Computer Science in the School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University and RELEASE project coordinator. “We believe we have assembled a world-class team from across Europe. As the language is a trend-setter for reliable distributed computing we expect that RELEASE will have a global impact far beyond the burgeoning Erlang community.”

“These two grants show Erlang Solutions’ commitment to stay at the forefront of Erlang based research, helping Erlang become a winner in the multi-core and cloud computing revolution,” commented Francesco Cesarini, Founder and Technical Director at Erlang Solutions. “We are delighted to work with our world class academic and industrial partners. With their support we have been given the opportunity to develop the multi-core frameworks of the future.”

-ENDS-

About Erlang Solutions Ltd

Erlang Solutions specialises in supporting businesses with the creation, integration, delivery and lifetime support of products and services based on the Erlang programming language, from small developers to Fortune 500 corporations.

Erlang Solutions is the only company of its kind totally focused on Erlang and the Erlang community, offering industry-leading research, development, training and worldwide support for businesses using Erlang. Erlang Solutions helps its customers to realise the potential of Erlang-based solutions, with all the inherent benefits of the low lifetime cost, extreme reliability and scalability offered by Erlang. Erlang Solutions has offices in London, Stockholm and Krakow. For further information please visit www.erlang-solutions.com

About Erlang, the programming language

Erlang is a programming language developed specifically for systems requiring extremely high levels of reliability and scalability. Erlang is ideally suited to use in systems with a high degree of concurrency, such as telecoms, banking, automotive, instant messaging and social networks. Erlang Solutions was founded in 1998 by several of the original creators of the Erlang language. Erlang is an Open Source language with an active and growing global community of developers and programmers.

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